How to add an assignment to a Perusall course

Once you have content in your Perusall library, how do you make an assignment?

To create an assignment, you must select content for students to read/watch/listen to, so at least one item must be added to your Library tab. To add items, click: Course home > Library > Add content. You can add a book from the Perusall catalog, or upload your own material(s). (How do I manage my Perusall course content?)

Once there is content in your library, click: Course home > Assignments > +Add assignment to create an assignment. 

Content

Choose content to assign from the dropdown menu. Click Add another part to use multiple library items in one assignment. (See also How do I create assignments that include multiple section or page ranges?)

Options

Navigate to the Options tab to set a submission deadline. In this tab, you also have the options to:

1. Create an Assignment Name
   • If you name the assignment, ensure the name is unique. (Perusall assumes that assignments with the same name are being assigned to different students and will merge those assignments into a single column in your Gradebook, which will lead to unexpected results if that is not your intention.)
2. Provide instructions for students that will be visible in the assignment information tab while students work on the assignment. (What do all the icons mean?)
3. Set an assignment visibility date (when students can begin accessing the assignment)
4. Choose whether to assign to:
   • Entire Class
   • Specific Students
   • Specific Groups (if using Specified/Manual Grouping)
   • Entire Class, but exclude specific students
5. Set an Anonymous Posting Policy for the assignment:
   • Let students decide whether to post anonymously
   • Require all comments to be posted anonymously
   • Do not allow students to post anonymously
6. Make the assignment optional.
   • If enabled, this assignment will not show up in the gradebook.
7. Do not remind students to complete this assignment. 
8. Make the assignment extra credit (only available for LTI 1.3 courses)
   • These get created as 0 point assignments in the LMS (so if the assignment is e.g. 10 points in Perusall and the student gets 8/10, we report it to the LMS as 8 "out of 0" instead of 8 out of 10). These assignments are excluded from the average score in the Perusall gradebook.

Scoring

Navigate to the Scoring tab to either use course scoring settings (default) or specify custom scoring settings for the assignment.

Finally, click OK/Save changes. 

Managing Assignments

• To edit an individual assignment, click: Course home > Assignments > particular assignment > Edit.
• To delete an individual assignment, click: Course home > Assignments > particular assignment > Delete > OK. 
  • Comments are tied to the document in the library, so if an assignment is deleted, comments are still discoverable from the library.  You can recreate an assignment using the same content, and the comments will reappear in the new assignment.
• Use the multi-select tool (white boxes to left assignment titles) to modify multiple assignments at once.
• To manage all assignment submission deadlines and visibility dates in one place, click on Edit Deadlines at the top right of your Assignments Page.
• Click on Deleted Assignments at the bottom of the page to view/restore any deleted assignments.
• Click on Hide old assignments (at the of your assignments list) to hide all assignments who've submission dates have passed from your view.